Abstract: In East Africa, the allocation of land communicates political meaning beyond the mere distribution of a material asset. Despite the plentitude of land in East Africa, political control over people in many areas was accounted in discourses of control over territory, and the mutual obligations engendered in its allocation. Areas like Buhaya and Kilimanjaro, where central allocating authorities had been created, became key points of reference for the development of colonial and postcolonial land tenure policies because land and its allocation defined relations between patron and client and therefore constituted a language to debate the relation of citizen and state. This essay begins with a survey of the politics of land allocation across the territory that is now mainland Tanzania, and then focuses on two areas that had particular influence on late colonial land policy. The argument here concludes by demonstrating the influence these practices around land had on a postcolonial policy, which sought to create a new national society partly through the co-optation of landed discourse.